


Over and Out

by Ark



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Porn, Assassins, Established Relationship, M/M, Men in love, Modern Day, Oral Sex, Past Relationship(s), Post-Movie, Secrets, Sex, supersoldiers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 15:40:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1863240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark/pseuds/Ark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love and loss are Sam Wilson's specialties.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Over and Out

**Author's Note:**

> Undying thanks to [stillwanderingflame](http://stillwanderingflame.tumblr.com) for betaing me into shape, and to [reserve](http://reserve.tumblr.com) for pre-reading. I'm on [tumblr](http://et-in-arkadia.tumblr.com) if you want to say hey and cry over gifsets together.

Sam finds the Winter Soldier in his kitchen, helping himself to Sam’s bourbon collection. He chooses a good bottle and pours two generous drinks.

Sam puts down his groceries and accepts the cup offered by the metal hand.

“Sit,” suggests the Winter Soldier. He jerks his chin at the kitchen table. 

Sam takes a seat. The man who was once Steve’s best pal and now numbers among the world’s foremost killing machines is standing by his Cuisinart, dressed in black. The civilian garb is awkward on him, the clinging modern lines of skinny jeans and a fitted hoodie flattering but incongruous with his steely-eyed stare. His face is pinched and haunted, an all-too-familiar expression to Sam. His hair is stringy and overgrown, tied back.

Sam isn’t afraid. Not really. The initial flight reaction is tamped down, and he’s curious. If the guy wanted him dead, he’d already be dead. Sam lifts his glass, toasts, takes a sip.

“He thinks he’s coming after me,” says the Winter Soldier, without preamble, all business. “He’s preparing to leave.”

Sam shrugs. “Not my problem, man.”

“You’re lying,” says the Soldier, eyes narrowing above the unshaven scruff of his cheek. “You’re involved with the preparation.”

Sam shrugs again. Has another sip.

The Soldier stalks forward, like he might attack, and at the last moment throws himself into the opposite chair at the table. He has his cup pressed between both hands, tight enough that the glass shivers and threatens to fracture. It holds. 

For two and a half minutes they drink in companionable silence.

“You must keep him away,” says the Winter Soldier. “My mission remains to destroy him at all costs.”

Sam considers this, trying to shake off the chill the words bring on. “Then why haven’t you?”

The Soldier has a cutting, sullen glare and the ability to sit without speaking long enough that Sam gives up. 

“Seems to me that Cap’s got a mission of his own he needs to see through,” says Sam, philosophical. “Don’t see how I could stop him. You know Steve. Stubborn like a dog with a bone when he gets an idea in his head.”

More silence. More staring. More bourbon.

“I’ll find the means to contact you, if you get too close,” says the Winter Soldier, deciding to go with the strategy of ignoring Sam completely. “You will then deflect or deter him.”

“Like hell I will.” Sam folds his arms across his chest. He itches for his suit, to be able to face the guy on even ground -- say, on the rooftop, wings spread to catch the night air. “Wouldn’t work anyway. Figure he’ll be able to track you near anywhere. He spends a long time reading your file, and re-reading it, figuring you out. Bet he knows what you’re gonna do before you do it.”

“The choice is yours. If he comes after me, he’s going to die.”

“It’s not my call,” says Sam, feeling his jaw tighten, “but I can be there to prevent that scenario from happening.”

The Soldier knocks back a big swallow of bourbon. “You aren’t going to like the places where I’m going.”

“That’s called shipping out,” says Sam. “You go anyway.”

The conversation isn’t going well. The Soldier looks keen to shoot something, and Sam is glad the birds are on the roof and he never got that dog he was thinking about. 

Sam finishes his drink and gets up to bring back the bottle. The Soldier’s eyes track him, probably hoping that he’s going for a knife. Sam disappoints him. 

Sam pours them each another inch. Steve will never forgive him if he doesn’t try; all of his training tells him to try. So he tries to reach out. Says: “Seems to me you’re going through a lot of trouble to save the man you say is your target.”

The Soldier’s scowl darkens, but Sam see can that there’s real conflict underneath. He’s spent too much time with hard-bitten men and women taught to conceal their emotions when they are boiling over. He knows what it looks like because he’s looked at his own face in the mirror. 

The struggle is happening, the instincts of the unscrupulous assassin Hydra forged running up against the remains of who this man once was. How much of Bucky Barnes is left inside the Winter Soldier or might be revived is the question that keeps Steve up at night. Sam is usually up with him. 

The Soldier takes a sip instead of answering, his gaze picking Sam apart. Sam knows that he’s got trained psychological strategies of his own, can get a read on a man from 300 yards. The expression on his face makes him look like he is squinting through a rifle sight. 

The Soldier tries to bait and switch to regain advantage. “You fuck him.”

Sam is quite good at keeping still, no sudden movements. He thinks about the ongoing revelation that is Steve in his bed. He thinks about how they can make love for hours, how Steve needs that, how Sam is happy to oblige, and about the day they broke the couch. He thinks about Steve turning to him in the middle of the night, the shaking of his shoulders as he grieves for this man.

For three seconds Sam calculates the potentials of reaching across the table and seizing the Winter Soldier by the throat. Then he says, “Yeah. I do.”

The Soldier nods. No reaction. “The man I was used to. He’d say you have a duty as his partner to look out for him.”

Sam blinks. He’d been expecting a taunt, not an appeal to shared emotion. To logic. To say that Steve needs reining in on occasion is the understatement of two centuries. But the way it’s phrased both troubles and intrigues Sam. 

It sounds like a classic dissociative case, only the person across from him is unique in the annals of psychology. The ghostly echoes in the Winter Soldier’s head are more real than the throwaway personalities programmed into him for missions, and Sam imagines it must all amount to so much shouting. He wonders how many voices there are.

“I told you,” says Sam. “That’s what I intend to do. You want to keep Cap safe, you stay right here and let us help you, and you’ll never see him better.”

He doesn’t pull any punches about it. He doesn’t think about himself, where he’ll end up if that happens. The world will be a safer place with the Winter Soldier locked safely in a Stark lab, and it’ll do Steve a world of good. 

But the murderous light is back in the Soldier’s eyes. “There is too much left unfinished.”

Sam’s been seeing Steve for the better part of two months, or else he wouldn’t believe that these people and their B-movie dramatic statements are for real. By now he’s encountered enough minor villain monologues to take them at face value. Even Steve will sound like this when he gets worked up, making declarative statements about the greater good and the glory of self-sacrifice. He’ll stop if Sam starts humming ‘You’re a Grand Old Flag.’ 

He doesn’t like the expression on the Winter Soldier’s face, which dares Sam to suggest otherwise -- that there can be anything more important than revenge, than righting wrongs through fire and blood. 

Sam wants to take a good deal of issue with this tactic. He has plenty to say on the subject. But he knows that look, too, and the signs when a subject is past persuasion. Most Army docs would shudder at this face, reach for their scrip books and strongest meds. 

Sam can see that he doesn’t need any further zombifying. What the Winter Soldier needs is direction. Not for his mission -- that, as always, is clear enough -- but after it. That’s when he won’t know what to do. Soldiers seldom fall apart on the battlefield. It’s only once they’re back home, the chain of command broken, the insensibility of it all setting in. 

The inability to settle down once you’ve been perpetually on guard. The Winter Soldier’s been standing sentry for seventy years when he hasn’t been in action. It’s afterwards that will matter.

“We’ll do our best not to trip you up,” says Sam, meeting him eye to eye, “and when you’re done, you should know that you have a place here. Steve wouldn’t have it any other way, and I’m right there with him. You would be welcome. You wouldn’t sit on your ass, either. Everyone’s got jobs around here, man, you should see what Romanov pulls in monthly before taxes.”

For the first time Sam thinks he’s caught the Winter Soldier off-guard. It takes a beat for his face to maintain its neutral dead-eyed stare; under other circumstances Sam would’ve gotten a smile, he’s sure of it. In pictures Bucky Barnes is always smiling big and broadly, like he never stops. 

The Winter Soldier’s mouth is a bleak line, but for the briefest flicker it becomes a dash -- pauses with potential before flattening down. Sam watches it happen, and will tell Steve about it.

Instead of smiling the Winter Soldier says, “You’ve spoken about my--”

“About your everything, dude,” says Sam, cutting him off gently. He wets his tongue with whiskey before his own sort of monologue. The hero’s incredibly hot and understanding boyfriend who is also a badass and super chill sort of speech. It’s a growing subgenre. “Let me set you straight on this. I don’t know how much you remember about the past, but Steve still wears your BFF friendship necklace to bed. He’s not gonna stop until you’re home safe or both of you are dead. The rest of us like to play a game called ‘let’s prevent the latter from happening and find a way to get your ass to Tony Stark while we try to keep Steve from overly dramatic sacrifice-play scenarios.’ Yeah, we suck at game names. I’m telling you all of this because this is how it’s gonna play out one day, and I don’t want you to be surprised when it happens. You don’t need to tell me to keep Steve safe. I’m planning on it, and I have a fuck-ton of the craziest back-up you’ve ever seen.” He drains his cup and sets it down with a solid clunk. 

“I’m,” starts the Winter Soldier, and Sam watches him pause, watches him struggle to complete the thought, to attach a sentiment. Jesus Christ, the man spent seventy years commanded to never show emotion or declare an opinion, wiped and reprogrammed when he got cocky. 

Sam watches the Winter Soldier try and figure out what he is. Glad? Sad? Mad? Bad? Rad?

“I’m relieved to have that information.”

Relieved. Sam will take it. He blows out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Cool. Providing resources is kinda my thing.” 

He’d like to believe that something has been settled; the air between them feels easier to breathe, and there have been no murderous stares for some minutes. He’d like to believe that the message has been received and will be processed. 

The Winter Soldier makes for an unorthodox but fascinating drinking buddy; without the threat of imminent death Sam’s having a great time. Sam lets himself imagine this as a regular occurrence, whiskey with this man, whoever he is, helping him to recover his stories. What Steve’s face would look like if he could see them talking together. Sam bets the Winter Soldier would be a shoo-in for the experimental LSD therapy trials; they could all take acid and hug it out, wouldn’t that be something --

“He’ll be back soon.” The Winter Soldier is standing, glass in hand. There are no clocks in the kitchen, nothing to indicate the passage of time, but Sam would bet Steve’s five minutes away to the nanosecond. 

“Stay,” Sam tries once more, though he knows it won’t work. Not yet. “Tell him to stay safe. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”

The Winter Soldier glances at Sam, and it’s back -- the quirk of lips that suggest a smile. The shadow of a smile. He shakes his head. “He never did,” he says. “Stubborn son of a bitch.”

Then he drains his glass. Then he deposits the glass in Sam’s sink. Then he goes out through the skylight.

Sam walks through the sequence of events after it occurs. Somehow the glass left thoughtfully for washing is more of a mindfuck than the exit. He scrubs a hand over his eyes. Pours another shot’s worth. 

This lasts the five minutes it takes for Steve to arrive. Sam watches the countdown on his phone.

He stays in place at the table, leaves everything in place, knows that will be important to Steve, that at first he’ll treat this like a crime scene. Will want to pull out a magnifying glass and look for clues, will want to follow the Winter Soldier up through the window.

Jesus, those two deserved each other. Sam’s human, and there are days like today when he wonders what he thinks he’s doing in this mix; and then Steve comes in like sunshine with a six-pack of their favorite beer. Like sunshine, like light and warmth and everything good for growth; like sunshine, scorchingly, blisteringly hot in a green v-neck sweater that Sam is partial to. And Sam knows what he’s doing. 

Sam folds his arms across his chest as Steve sets down the beer and takes in Sam’s posture and the bottle at the center of the table and the glass in the sink in one sweep of his eyes. 

“Okay,” Sam starts. “Don’t freak out.”

Steve is at his side in an eyeblink, his hand gripping Sam’s shoulder. “Sam, are you--”

“Fine.” Sam covers the hand with his own, squeezes, keeps it there. “Damn fine, I might add.”

“My God.” Steve is going to bite right through his lip, the lower one, Sam’s favorite. Sam’s health assured, Steve can’t stop looking around, combing for evidence. He’s already figured out the skylight, is squinting upwards for clues. “What was he doing here? What did he say? Jesus, did you really drink with him? Did he threaten you? Is he remembering? Why did he--”

“That’s at least six different questions, Trebek.” Sam squeezes his hand again, then decides it’s a better strategy to leave the crime scene for higher ground. Steve won’t stop glancing up like he’s half-convinced the Winter Soldier might drop back down. Sam gets to his feet, guides them on a leisurely stroll along the hallway, holding Steve’s hand with their fingers interlaced. “Take a breath, Steve. He was here trying to save you from yourself same as all your other associates. What can I say? He worries.” 

Trying to make light isn’t working, because Steve’s expression looks torn in so many directions, and Steve’s sad face is like a kicked puppy landing in a pile of baby rabbits. Sam sighs and answers the other questions rapid-fire: “Yeah, we drank. He picked my best whiskey. Still trying to decide if that’s a classy move or a trashy one. We had a pretty good chat, all things considered. I didn’t feel threatened. We agree about you.” 

Sam pulls Steve down next to him on the couch, leans into his shoulder. There’s a lot of shoulder, so he gets comfortable. Steve has moved past shocked into shocky, drops his eyes and looks down at their hands. Sam keeps holding on, won’t let him go. 

Sam says, “I think he remembers some things. Plays it close to the vest, isn’t big on the overshare. But there were -- there were signs.” He takes a deep breath, because he knows that this will change their mode of being, their planned operation. But he’s glad. Not sad. He’s relieved to have the information. “I think there’s hope for him. It won’t be easy, and it’s gonna suck a lot before it’s through. But I think your boy is in there, if you want my professional op--”

Steve is kissing him hard, so hard, crushing Sam to him with super strength, like being hugged by marble, like being wrapped in iron. Then Steve softens all over and his mouth is soft too, and his blue eyes are huge and amazed. Every time he kisses Sam it’s with a look of wide-eyed wonder that this is allowed, that kissing Sam is a thing he can have without complication. 

Steve draws back and breathes for grounding before Sam has to remind him. “Thank you. I. You know I--”

“This a good thing. We’re gonna focus on the positives. One, he tried to warn us off for our own safety. That’s real progress. Two, no knives were introduced at all. Three, there’s clearly been some level of recall. He has an instinct to keep you alive, and he mentioned your past relations.”

“Our -- what?”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “He asked me point-blank if we were fucking. Actually, it wasn’t asking so much as telling. He already knew, must’ve staked us out before. I was getting to that part. Don’t rush my storytelling time, this is important. He didn’t try to hurt me with it. Tried to use a kind of mutual sympathy. Appealed to me as your current partner, to keep you from going after him, to keep you out of harm’s way. He implied that was Bucky’s influence. He tries to talk as though he’s at a distance from the memories, but that could as easily be an act.” 

Steve is sitting still and thinking loudly and focusing on his breathing, so Sam rubs the back of Steve’s neck and keeps talking. “I told him that when it’s finished he has a place here. No judgements kinda deal.”

Steve inhales sharply. “Oh, Sam.”

“Yeah, I did that for you. You can thank me later. My favorite flowers are peonies. I told him what the score was. I’d like to think he heard me.”

This time Steve kisses him for longer, without the crushing embrace, grateful and giving and slow. They melt into the couch and let themselves muddle there a while. Sam with an ear to his chest listens to the way Steve’s heart is racing, at a clip that eclipses mere human hearts. “Are _you_ hearing me, Cap?”

Steve swallows. “It’s a lot to process. If I’d come home five minutes earlier--”

“Wasn’t gonna happen,” Sam tells him, then hesitates. “He’s afraid to see you. Fear was the primary emotion. You were his last mission before he went AWOL, and he doesn’t know how deep it’s still programmed. He isn’t sure what he’d do if he saw you, I think. I don’t think any of us are gonna know until we have that happening live.”

“Flowers aren’t enough,” says Steve, which seems left-field until he swings a leg over Sam and moves to balance above him. “I have to thank you immediately and with other means at my disposal.”

Sam happily arches into the contact. “I’m not saying no. But I think we should finish talking about --” He blinks at Steve, hitches an accusing eyebrow. “Wait a second. Is it turning you on, talking about this? It is, isn’t it. Don’t bat your eyelashes at me like that, Rogers, I see right through you.”

“It’s just,” and Steve turns pink, ducks to hide his face against the side of Sam’s neck. “I can’t help it. The idea of both of you in that kitchen, having a drink.” He mouths a kiss into the tender skin below Sam’s ear. “You having hope gives me more than I’ve had since this started.”

“Hope for a distant peaceable future of kinky sex, apparently,” drawls Sam, not dropping it. He’s too amused -- and, yeah, aroused -- by Steve’s obvious squirming, by the hard length of Steve’s cock pressed to his thigh through pants. Steve nips at the soft flesh of his ear for the comment, but Sam prompts, “You like that idea? Both of us at once?”

Steve goes still as he exhales, holds himself still. “God,” he whispers. “God, yes.”

Sam went into this thing with eyes wide open. From the beginning, he and Steve have been honest with each other, truthful about what drives them and what they’re after. Steve has never held back about the man who would be Bucky. 

Sam knows their whole history, could write a Harlequin about the twists and turns of their romance. It has been long established that Steve remains in love with Bucky Barnes, and that if there’s a way of salvaging a Bucky who is capable of feeling the same way, they will be together. 

Sam is cool with this. He understands this. He knows what it’s like to be in love, to have a person worth more to you than anything on earth, and he knows what it’s like to have that person taken away. 

The crippling pain and despair, the certainty of never being the same again. To have them return from the dead is unfathomable to Sam and happening to Steve, so Sam does his best to be supportive. 

He gets it. If Riley could come back somehow--

\--so he gets it. Love and loss are Sam Wilson’s specialities. 

This is the expectation that comes with shacking up with Captain America. Where there’s Cap, there’s Bucky. They arrive as a matched set; it is only the Bucky that is damaged and missing. 

Sam has looked forward to a future where Steve can be shared between them. That’ll mean the ongoing nightmare of Hydra and the Winter Soldier is settled, and Steve will have a chance to be happy. Sam has hoped for that future. He just hadn’t realized that Steve wanted to be shared between them so literally.

“Tell me more,” says Sam. “I thought we’d be more of a sister-wives thing, but you wanna do it up Playboy Mansion style?”

Steve lifts his head and furrows his golden eyebrows, trying to work his way through Sam’s question. “I couldn’t imagine having you and Bucky, and being with one and not the other,” he explains. “I’ll always want you both. Is that -- what do you --”

“I think Captain America’s a lot freakier than he gets credit for.” Sam reaches up, cups a hand to Steve’s cheek. “No, don’t look like that. Freaky in a good way, Steve. What I think is that we’re gonna cross that bridge when we come to it. But.” He returns Steve’s earnest confession with his own unshakable honesty: “You know that I’m all in.”

“Sam Wilson,” says Steve, fervent, his eyes lit up. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

“Pretty sure there’s a wing in the Library of Congress dedicated to documenting the stuff you’ve done,” says Sam, not biting at the self-deprecation. “Anyway, it’s no hardship. Your dude’s got a vibe going on for him, with the grunge thing and the smoky eyes. Reformed Hot Topic-hot. I can see it.”

Steve laughs. He’s been to the mall enough to get the reference. “Bucky used to take so much care in dressing, the other guys would call him a dandy.”

“Yeah, well, Bucky Barnes must be crying over the hoodie and the Converse. It was a lot of black. When he comes back, maybe we should find him an emo band to front.”

“I love you,” says Steve.

Sam looks at him. There are some words that contain magic. Words have power. His job is using words to help men and women heal deep wounds that are invisible. Words can also hurt worse than shrapnel. Some must be restricted, banned. In the history of words there are three that when said in sequence have the ability to alter people forever. Once spoken they cannot be retracted. They are binding. Yet they are meaningless without the answering sequence.

“I love you, too,” says Sam. 

Steve is everywhere all around him, kissing his mouth, one hand pushing up under Sam’s shirt to feel more skin, urging the shirt off entirely when they break from the kiss. Steve drags free of his sweater and drops back down over Sam, pressed in tight and lined up in all the right places. His movie-star face is ecstatic, though he tips his head as though suddenly shy. “Didn’t know if I should tell you yet.”

“In my experience,” says Sam, “which is vast and wise, that’s always something you should tell.”

“I want to fuck you.”

“That one you should probably sit on a while before telling someone.” Sam feels both eyebrows lifting. “Yeah?”

“Yes.” Steve’s lips are busy on Sam’s neck. “Can I?”

“Well, I’d planned on Netflix and and tofu stir-fry, but I’m flexible.” Sam’s heartbeat picks up, and he grins to show Steve that he’s definitely in the game. This hasn’t been their dynamic before, but Sam’s been curious. Never pushed Steve -- preferences are personal. Doesn’t stop a guy from thinking about it or jerking off to it whenever Steve’s called up on Avengers duty.

Steve’s bright eyelashes fall over guileless blue eyes. “I haven’t ever, Sam.”

“You--” Sam starts.

This takes longer to process. Sam has had Steve six ways from Sunday; there’s nothing about Steve that could be called virgin except a lingering virginal air of optimism. Steve has recounted (in detail, when Sam asked) his deflowering by Bucky Barnes on a hot June night in Brooklyn when they were nineteen. 

Seems that Bucky hadn’t swung the other way, though. Sam thinks about that, about how they had been reunited during the Second World War and Bucky had just gone on fucking Steve Rogers like he hadn’t doubled in size and quintupled in strength. Sam appreciates him. He’s starting to think he and Bucky have a lot in common. 

Sam thinks about how Steve wants to do this with him, and maybe it’s something that is unrelated to Bucky Barnes. It’s Sam that Steve wants like this, it’s Sam who will be his first. This is for them.

“Nevermind. We can work with that,” Sam assures, aware that his voice sounds low and husky and sexy and not doing anything to change that. “You want to go to bed or stay out here? I know about your thing for couches.”

Steve does, in fact, have a couch thing. Sam will find him curled up there for naps despite an abundance of mattresses, and there was the couch-breaking incident. 

But then Steve says, “Let’s go to bed,” so they go.

In the bedroom they lose the rest of their clothes and pull back the sheets they tuck with military precision each morning. Before they get in Sam sinks to his knees on the carpet and reaches for Steve’s cock, which is a glorious masterpiece of Mother Nature. 

As perfect as the rest of Steve, long and thick and so, so hard for Sam already. He curls his hand around the base and licks his way up, takes his time about it. There’s no need to hurry. First times shouldn’t be rushed. Their other first time was a little rushed, but you try fucking Captain America and seeing the face of God and we’ll see how long you last.

Sam works Steve’s cock into his mouth, down his throat. Above him Steve groans and a shudder runs through the whole stunning length and breadth of him. Sam swallows as much as he can, pumps his hand where his lips can’t reach. Steve is highly excited, the taste of him on Sam’s tongue, the clean smell of Steve’s Ivory soap mixed with the musk of imminent sex. 

Sam keeps his eyes open and snapped on Steve’s eyes watching him, holds Steve deep as he can go and thinks about how he could stay like this for hours (he can; they’ve tried), about how they’ve hardly begun. He thinks about where they’re headed and reaches down to fist his cock.

Steve’s fingers sweep over Sam’s scalp, cup the back of his neck. “Sam, Sam--” 

It’s a moan, delicious, but there’s a note of protest that makes Sam pull back, licking his lips.

He shoots a look up at Steve. “Come on, it’s okay. Know I can make you come and you’ll be ready for me again in two minutes. Won’t you, Captain?” He says it lightly, teasingly, hands still working Steve’s cock, and his own. 

Steve slowly shakes his head. “I...ah…” His fingers closes around Sam’s grip, and at his urging, Sam lets go and lets Steve pull him smoothly to his feet. 

“I’m too close. You’re too good, too good…” Steve starts to backstep Sam towards the bed, and Sam gets with the program and goes. 

“I want to -- I want to be different, tonight,” Steve says, setting his hands to Sam’s shoulders and guiding him to the mattress. Steve moves to straddle him, belting Sam’s hips. “I want to pretend like I’m normal. Like I couldn’t make the bed collapse with a well-placed punch, or be able to come five times in an hour.”

“Show-off,” mutters Sam, but he’s smiling. 

“I want to wait,” says Steve, leaning down to kiss Sam’s lips, then leaning over him to retrieve the lube from the bedside table. “I don’t want to come until I’m inside you.”

“Jesus,” Sam exhales. “That was smooth.”

“I’m learning.” Steve slides further down the bed, and Sam lets his thighs fall open; Steve moves to fit between their vee, and Sam grips him tight. “From the best.”

“I should tell you,” says Sam, “it’s been a while. So don’t you worry about any technique save making sure I’m prepped. I can see the hamster in your brain running on its wheel. Don’t worry, Cap. I’ve got you, but you better use a lot of lube.” 

Steve does. His fingers are dripping with wet when they ease inside of Sam, and he takes Sam’s instructions to heart and takes a dizzyingly extended time stretching him in preparation. Steve’s fingers are big in proportion with the rest of him and they are as considerate, and soon Sam is riding back against him. 

Sam breathes through it and is unlocked, feels himself loosening up in all over. He hasn’t felt like this in a long time, knows that for all the exploring of vulnerabilities he counsels others in daily this is one he hasn’t allowed himself since Riley died. 

He hasn’t done this since Riley. Was a time when he didn’t think he’d ever do this again. 

Didn’t think he’d ever say I love you like that again, until he did.

Steve has blindsided him from the first, and Sam has excellent vision, 20/8, better than the best. Every day with Steve is a surprise and an adventure; sometimes it’s a horror show, and they have to crawl through bruised and bloody into the next day. Most days it’s the thrill-ride Sam lives for, and he has a partner to watch his back and cover him when it matters most. 

He is in love with the most upstanding man who ever stood up, and a man who wears masks to cover up the darkness in him. Steve is truth and justice personified, and as such he is dangerous and frequently misguided. Steve needs Sam to reel him in, and Sam needs Steve to open up again. The equation is simple and it works.

When Sam refocuses on Steve, he finds Steve watching, wondering. The careful motion of Steve’s fingers and his wrist hasn’t stopped, and Sam’s body hasn’t stopped moving to the rhythm. But Sam had clearly gone elsewhere and returned. Steve doesn’t question it, just waits for him to come back. 

“You know,” says Steve, bending to press a kiss to Sam’s knee, “you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve seen since I woke up here.”

“Now you’re laying it on pretty thick,” Sam says, but it emerges as a low murmur. “You’re making it work, though. I’m at least 95% seduced.”

“Yeah? You like it when I do this?” Steve’s fingers slide deliciously far. “Can you take another?”

“I can take everything you’ve got.” Sam’s eyebrow climbs, and he makes it an invitation. Not a challenge. Between them, sex is a collaboration. He’s ready, Steve is able. He reaches up to pull Steve down.

When Steve moves into Sam it’s slow, inch by inch by inch -- Steve’s a lot of inches. Sam’s head goes back against the pillow and he shows the line of his throat and cants his hips up for more. 

Steve ducks to fit his mouth against Sam’s, his smart mouth with its sly tongue. At last he comes flush against Sam and holds himself there, the corded muscles of his back and shoulders keeping him still. 

Sam nods -- Sam can do that, he can nod -- and Steve draws out as slowly, thrusts back in to the hilt with a pivot of his hips, like he’s done this a thousand times before. Of course Steve would be good on his first try: of course. Steve is a master strategist, and an even better intuitive thinker; he’s already puzzled out just what Sam likes, what Sam needs. Probably has maps drawn up about it somewhere, if he knows Steve.

“Still with me?” Steve says it against Sam’s mouth.

Okay so for a moment Sam isn’t, because Sam is in outer space. If fucking Captain America’s an experience that shorts out his brain and electrifies his body, getting fucked by Captain America’s an entirely out-of-body experience. It takes a while for Sam to sort out just what’s happening to him, because no one’s made love to him like this before. There’s never been anyone like Steve before, full stop.

Steve is trying to be, as he put it, normal -- keeping his great strength trapped in his mile-wide biceps, so that they practically radiate with restraint; keeping his pace steady and even instead of superhuman. But normal people aren’t built and made like Steve. Steve’s body is ideal across the spectrum, a statuesque Adonis with a cock as legendary, and every time he drives into Sam he sparks deep in him just right, and Sam sees stars spinning among his planets. 

Normal people tire, but Steve goes on and on, his widening eyes on Sam, his forehead pressed to Sam’s. Steve’s hands find Sam’s on the bed and he laces their fingers together and anchors Sam’s hands high above his head, grounding him.

Sam blinks back from somewhere around Mercury. “We’re good,” he tells Steve. “Don’t stop. Don’t you stop.”

He watches Steve’s face change -- gain the flush and glow of confidence, and a small smirk that Sam wants to taste, but Steve’s too busy talking to let him. Steve’s relief is palpable as it pours out:

“Oh God Sam you feel so incredible I didn’t know that this was the way it felt oh my God you feel so fucking good I wish you could feel what I’m feeling right now I wish I had done this so many times before Christ is it good for you like this? Is it better if I do this? Yeah? God, yes, lift your hips for me, show me what you want -- oh, Sam, oh, oh -- damn it I can’t believe it you’re so --”

It’s all lovely music to Sam’s ears, and he wraps his legs around Steve’s back and rolls with every thrust, their bodies in concert. Sam says, “I’ve got you, Steve. We’re good. We’re really fucking good.”

“Can I come inside you?”

“You think I’m gonna miss out on that? It’s like you don’t know me at all. Get out of this apartment.”

Steve laughs against his neck, the sound vibrating down to Sam’s toes. “I really do love you, Sam Wilson.” 

“You’d better. I’m the best piece of ass you’ve ever had. And I don’t put out easily.” Sam feels a grin turning up the corners of his lips, and he’s the one who changes up their rhythm, speeds them faster. He sheaths himself on Steve’s cock again and again, getting a low groan from Steve that better than music. 

“‘s that so?” Steve’s teasing as he pants. “Seems to me I remember it a bit differently --”

“‘s that so?” Sam’s mimicry is spot-on. Sam is laughing now too, too close to his own edge. But Steve won’t let go their hands, so Sam pushes him on it: “Who kissed who first?”

“Well.”

“And then you practically carried me to your bedroom --”

“You were injured!”

“Undressing me and telling naughty stories about your war buddies --”

“You were in pain. I was trying to distract you.”

“ _Well._ It worked.” Sam tilts his head. “You gonna let me come with you?”

“No,” says Steve. “I want you to come in my mouth.”

“We can do that too,” says Sam. 

“The first time we were together,” Steve says, his hips starting to slow, “you remember what I said after?”

“Yes,” says Sam. Sam’s memory is grade-A and he isn’t about to forget game-changing days like the first time he and Steve took each other to bed. He remembers every word. But he says, only, “You thanked me for rocking your world and then we cuddled. It was pretty awesome.”

“I said, ‘thank you, Sam. You’re the best thing in my life,’” Steve quotes, and on the last syllable he thrusts hard and comes harder, shuddering against Sam and spilling deep. Steve’s cock goes off and he’s filling Sam up, and Sam moves to take it all, every inch of Steve in him as Steve gives in. 

Steve’s not normal in the end, Steve’s not normal, and orgasm’s extended and his body is infinite, so that he keeps riding the wave of Sam, and kissing Sam’s mouth, long past the point that should be possible. 

Steve stays half-hard and watches the way he can make Sam moan beneath him, Sam’s release so close and yet out of hand with Steve’s hands holding his. Then Steve pulls out and lets go and slides down in a graceful motion. 

A mischievous blink up at Sam’s staring face and then Steve swallows him in one swallow and oh fuck it all, that’s better than anything Sam can remember in a long, long time.

Sam watches the enthusiastic blond bob of Steve’s head as Steve sucks his cock, working the base with a hand like steel wrapped in satin. Steve is as skilled in sucking cock as he is at everything else -- it should be listed on his tactical skills run-down. 

So Sam isn’t ashamed of how quickly he comes down Steve’s throat. Steve is giving it all he’s got, a suctioning mouth with his tongue working wickedly, and this time he’s using all the powers at his disposal. 

Steve hardly needs to breathe around Sam’s cock, and the level of pressure is tighter than should be possible, enveloping Sam in wet heat while his hands stroke Sam’s skin and his eyes never leave Sam’s. Sam comes down Steve’s throat and then on Steve’s tongue when Steve draws back to taste. 

Steve lets Sam’s cock slip free and sits back on his haunches, looking pleased as punch. He doesn’t swallow until Sam’s gaze has refocused, and Sam shivers all over at the sight. 

Steve drops down beside him, stretching all his beautiful limbs at once. “Tell me the truth. Don’t hold back. I’m a natural, aren’t I? Don’t spare any details.”

“The paragon of modest humility,” Sam says, hitting him with a pillow. “No one’d believe what a dick you are.”

Steve’s still preening. “I made your eyes roll back in your head and your toes curl. Didn’t I, Sam.”

Sam uses the pillow for another thwack. Then he tucks the pillow under his head and settles down. For all the laughter, it’s also the most relaxed Sam has heard Steve sound in ages, as though for a moment his shadows could be outrun. Steve sounds young, sounds his age, like a twenty-six year old man who’s just successfully put his dick inside someone for the first time.

“You’ll do,” says Sam. 

This time Steve attacks with a pillow, and they fight it out lazily. They reach an impasse in a tangle of contented limbs, Sam’s back to Steve’s chest, legs curled together. They rest a while, buzzing with afterglow, pretending to doze. It’s delightful.

Then Sam has to bring it up.

Half an hour in, Sam says softly, “I know what you’re thinking.” 

Behind him, Steve breathes out. Sam is saying, “I know you well enough to know. And since it won’t matter what I say about this, I want you to know that I know, and I get it.”

“Sam--”

“If you make me regret saying this I’ll never forgive you. I mean it. I’ll buy my nieces and nephews Iron Man t-shirts and Thor backpacks for the school season.” 

“I don’t deserve you, Sam.”

“Thing is, you’ve got me.” Sam’s tone is matter-of-fact. “And I intend to make sure you’re stuck with me with for a long, long time. I want you to know that also.”

“Sam--”

“Goodnight, Steve,” says Sam, squeezing his eyes shut before he changes his mind and starts a fight. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” says Steve.

When Sam falls asleep, he dreams of Riley. He and Riley stand on the causeway surveying the city. He knows that it’s a dream because the streets are too quiet, without even birdsong, and there are two Washington monuments. And because Riley is next to him, wonderful and whole.

At a far-off point in the distance Steve is at attention in full Cap gear, only the suit is done up in Army colors, camo greens and browns and the distant gold of Steve’s hair. 

“Still a glutton for punishment, I see,” says Riley, smiling at Sam, punching his bicep. He slants a wry glance towards the bright speck that is Steve. God, how Sam has missed this one face. “And for rewards.”

“Did I do the right thing?” Sam wants to know. 

Riley cants his head. “Seems to me it’s hard to know what’s right and wrong anymore,” he says. “Good guys are bad guys, bad guys are good. All you can trust is your gut.” In the dream Sam can feel Riley’s fingers when they move to span across his belly. “It’s an excellent gut. You were the only one who wasn’t on their hands and knees throwing up after the experimental test-runs.”

Sam covers Riley’s hand with his own.

“So,” Riley wants to know, “how’d you figure it out?”

"Good gut." Sam shrugs. “Thought about what I’d do if someone told me you’d been sitting at their kitchen table,” he says. “How fast I would move.” His eyes track Steve’s far-off shape. “How I’d say goodbye.”

In the distance Steve is fading at the edges.

“I’m afraid I’ll lose him,” Sam admits. “Won’t be able to maintain the same pace.”

Riley and Sam are alone on the track at base where they took their morning laps. They are dressed in running clothes and shoes but they are walking.

“Bullshit.” Riley calls him on it. “Acceleration’s your favorite thing, Wilson. All you gotta do is catch up.” He takes off then, streaking away, legs pumping and arms milling like he might take off, and laughter propels Sam as he races after. 

Sam wakes up at 0500 hours on the dot every morning. He tucks in the sheets with military precision, drops and does 100 push-ups because old habits die the hardest. 

In the kitchen he brews a fresh pot of coffee and pours a cup dense with cream and sugar. He takes the chair at the table last claimed by the Winter Soldier and tilts back with perfect balance while he drinks his coffee. 

Sam looks up, to where Steve went out through the skylight.


End file.
